 For me, I didn't realize the intensity and the importance of oral language and how it connects to all the other things that the kids learn. I feel that increasing the opportunity for kids to speak and have more rich language opportunities has helped them to develop their writing skills. I understand that for myself in order to get my head wrapped around a topic or to feel connected with the people that I work with, I want to talk to them and it's the same with students and this project has really reinforced for me that it's the kids that talk the most that learn the most. And so once the students feel comfortable about sharing their thoughts with their friends it builds a sense of community. When they have a chance to teach each other through discussions it will show me how much they know and it can help deepen their own understanding. I feel that our students have really increased their vocabulary and by giving them the chance to talk to their friends within the structured lesson has given them more confidence. They're more willing to put up their hand and share their ideas. In general I find that they're more engaged and less inclined to just zone out and most importantly I think it's really helped them to have a stronger sense of belonging into our classroom. To increase oral language in the classroom over time I've developed specific routines for the students, talking routines. We have AB partners, we have carpet partners, we have turn and talk and they know instantly with cues how conversations can occur and be carried out effectively. So back to your carpet partner this time, outside's talk first. When I say to the kids turn to your carpet partner they know to turn and look at their partner and the expectation is knee to knee, eye to eye and we've talked about the importance of a conversation being you need to look at the person and we rotate through. So everyone over the course of the year has an opportunity to speak with everybody else. The idea of passing a ball back and forth is that a conversation is like a ball game and if you're with someone and you're trying to play catch and one person just throws the ball up and catches it but it's quite boring for the other person. So we actually got beanbags in and we practiced talking, having simple conversations and passing that beanbag back and forth. That really stuck with the kids and that was the light bulb for many of them to just, oh yeah, I can't just talk and talk and talk or I can't not say anything. That was the other piece we said well, if you're throwing the ball to me and I keep looking away or I keep like playing with my fingers or I just never even try to catch it, is it a fun no? We've been focusing a lot on using picture prompts this year and normally I would have students raise their hand and one idea about something that they knew about in the picture and I was trying to make sure that more students had a chance to participate and share but one day we had a picture with a bat in it and one little girl came up and was so excited to share everything she knew about bats and she started talking about an episode of the magic school bus she had seen and how she knew bats were nocturnal and after talking back and forth with her I realized she had a wealth of knowledge, background knowledge about bats that I never would have known so I passed the turn on to another student after she shared her first idea so it really helped me to take the time to strive for five turns back and forth on one topic before moving on to the next one and that has impacted their writing because rather than just stating many different ideas they can take one idea and expand and elaborate on that one idea. The time to talk about content allows them to practice and explore and try out some of that new vocabulary and try out the context how to use it. You jumped in to write what you're excited about you need to greet them. Good morning. For example to increase conversation every morning we do a meet and greet and that's where we practice our initial conversation skills so the students use the carpet partner routine and they turn, they greet their partner by name and we've practiced looking at people and sharing a conversation and that also has increased the sort of turn taking the back and forth that we want more than just hi how are you good conversation over the more back and forth the better. We're going to read a new book today and it's called Jeremiah Learns to Read. Some of the best strategies that I've learned through this project have been strategies through storytelling and nursery rhymes I found that using storytelling in nursery rhymes can really help to build background knowledge and another thing that we've been able to use a lot were props like puppets and visuals and these props can really help the shy learners even have the courage to speak up and tell their thoughts and ask their questions about the narratives that we're talking about in class so it's been really great. We tried some webbing where I would web out the main idea and show them specific ideas trying to encourage them to not just write a list about what they did over the weekend but to tell a story what I have found that is when I give them the chance to turn and have an actual conversation about their weekend then rather than just coming up with that one main idea as they chat with their friends they've come up with so many specific ideas about that one topic which has really helped to make their journal letters far more interesting before I had the same number of kids who always had their hand up the same number of kids who were quiet and listening I hoped that they were listening now I'm finding that all of my kids want to share their ideas and I just feel that they have a stronger sense that they really belong in our classroom and working in a transient community that's really key especially for my newer students and during the year I think one big concern teachers have with oral language is that things will just get away on them and there is an ability to create routines that the students feel comfortable in and also allow you to maintain a level of control in your class and back to me